


space oddity

by arbitrarily



Category: The Martian (2015)
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/M, Pre-Canon, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-27 01:48:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5028979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, the good news is: there's life on Mars. The bad? There's life on Mars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	space oddity

**Author's Note:**

> Someone had to do it: the inevitable SEX POLLEN fic because why not.

 

 

So, the good news is: there’s life on Mars. 

The bad? There’s life on Mars. And that shit makes Viagra look like, well, whatever the organic equivalent of a boner killer would be. NASA’s g-force training Vomit Comet cargo plane. The St. Louis Cardinals. Whole Foods. 

And the ugly? Considering it was Mark who discovered it and Mark who brought it into the Hab, all of this is really kinda sorta definitely probably his fault. Cool. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On any given day (or sol) the things Mark Watney thinks about (in no particular order) are:

1\. The Cubs;

2\. Sex; 

3\. The likelihood of zombies on Mars;

4\. Plants and shit, botany, whatever, he can be professional, he likes his job;

5\. A miserable death met in the cold uncaring vacuum of space;

6\. His dick. 

The past four sols, #2 and #6 have reigned 24/7 supreme. Like, no contest. 

He's not sure that's normal. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before they left Earth, some NASA head shrinker had vetted all the “entertainment programming” they each intended to bring up with them, like they feared back-to-back viewings of slasher movies or _Taxi Driver_ cued up to gregorian chants or Taylor Swift might result in the worst kind of _all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy_ cabin fever mayhem. Actually, Mark’s still not entirely sure of the point of combing through all those mp3 and vid and jpeg files since as far as he knows, none of the shit he uploaded is missing (not even the zombie spaghetti western set on fucking _Mars_ ). 

But the point of all this? For the year-plus long expedition to Mars (and the return trip) no one brought any porn. He’d joked with Martinez about it before they left – like hell they wanted a bunch of NASA nerds in on what yanks their respective chains. With horror, Martinez had said: _would that be in, like, our permanent file, man?_ Mark had laughed, imagined a string of kinky keywords attached to their names, for reference. The point though? Sex is now completely left up to the imagination, and what a fucking dangerous gambit that is, man.   

The reason he mentions this? He’s probably cracked because hand-to-god he cannot stop thinking in a never-ending loop of utter filth, starring his very own crew mates. Fucking everyone. _Fucking_ everyone. The dreams he’s been having – Christ, he can’t look anyone in the eye when he gets up (and, _rimshot_ , he is up in the morning, man, full mast). He reacts like he’s been burnt from so much as a passing hand on his shoulder. He averts his gaze, cracks more jokes than usual, hopes no one notices the flush to his cheeks, the wild look he’s not sure when appeared in his eyes. 

He’s kinda guessing it happened on sol 9.  

What happened was on sol 9 Mark fell through crumbling rock. At the bottom, (after his fall was broken and after, on a shaky exhale he made sound a lot like a laugh, he confirmed he was alive and his suit wasn’t breached and all of that was super awesome) he found what appeared to be ice crystals. He embarked on his own Martian spelunking mission as he brought the crystals up to the surface. Samples were brought back to the lab, put under a microscope, and what do you know – bust out the Bowie, there is life on Mars. They’d celebrated that night (as best as you can celebrate, in space, sans booze) and put the newly discovered spores through decontamination tests. The decontamination process? Really showed their failure of imagination. Because they thawed some crystals and because Mark thought decontamination was some fool-proof guarantee he took his helmet off and here he is now, four sols later, stuck inside Rover I with Commander Lewis and he’s pretty sure he’s running a fever and he’s pretty sure there’s something alive and not his crawling to life under his skin and all he really wants to know is what Lewis tastes like ( _her mouth, her tits, her cunt, under his tongue, and –_ ) and where inside of her he can bury himself ( _her mouth, her tits, her cunt –_ ). 

And that’s a real fucking problem. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the mission report Beck will write that exposure to Martian Spore Sample #MW001 results in a temporary allergic reaction. The symptoms include: racing heart, dizziness, fever, sweating, difficulty breathing, decrease in coordinated movement, lowered inhibitions, aggression, dilated pupils, dry mouth, excessively heightened arousal.

(On Earth, Vincent Kapoor will read the report, raise his head: “Is that last one a joke?”) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lewis eyes Watney warily. Of all the bizarre potential worst case scenarios.

“Marvin Protocol a go?” Beck says over the comms. 

Amongst the numerous drills they ran before they even left the ground was the  IF LIFEFORMS ARE ENCOUNTERED ON MARS training. Needless to say – a lot of jokes about that one; Watney had referred to it as The Marvin Protocol. Procedure mandates they were not to engage with any mobile, living organism they encounter unless explicitly ordered by Control to do so. The likelihood of such an event occurring clocked out so low not even the most addicted and least lucky cardsharp would try to play the table with those odds. The other event they had drilled for: Martian bacteria – MAIs, Mars-acquired illnesses. Quarantine was the answer to any of those scenarios: quarantine the affected and wait. Watch. See how the symptoms develop. 

So, quarantine it is.

“Oh, shit, we’re really calling it that?” Watney says beside her, a big toothy grin. 

“Affirmative,” Lewis says (specifically to Beck, but Watney only smiles wider). A disgruntled sigh carries over the comms from Martinez. “You’re gonna have to sit tight,” she says, all forced cheer.

Emergency quarantine protocol states that each team member is required to remain where they are, lockdown mode. Beck and Johanssen are back at the Hab, safe as houses, and Martinez is with Vogel doing routine maintenance checks on the MAV, which leaves Lewis here in the rover with Watney.

They had headed into the rover because Watney was short of breath. He complained of dizziness. Even through the glass faceplate of his helmet she could see his eyes were unfocused. He stumbled as she led him to the rover. She got him through the airlock, waited for depressurization, her gloved hand still curled around his arm, and she found him staring at it, the expression on his face impossible to read. She moved away from him.  

“Beck, you getting this?” she had said. She tried to mask the worry in her voice with something like caution, unclear if she succeeded.  

Watney hadn’t noticed; he immediately pulled his EVA suit off, and there it was, that dumb punch to the gut moment: he was hard, the ridge of his cock visible. She thinks she might have simply said, “oh.”

“Definitely not my proudest moment,” he said, looking down and then over at her. The empty smile on his face had faltered, strain visible to his features, a darker breed of worry than what she felt. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.” 

“ … what’s happening, Watney?” Beck asked after a beat, his voice disembodied and loud in the rover. 

“I don’t know how else to put this, and believe me, this is no slight to our stately commander seated beside me, but I’ve never been so inexplicably horny in my goddamn life,” Mark had said. 

“What’d he say?” Martinez said over the comms.

Now, Watney’s starting to sweat, his words coming too fast and clipped. “I don’t think we need to worry about the contagion factor?” he’s saying. “We’d all totally have it by now. Right? Right. That’s gotta be right.”

“It’s protocol,” Lewis says. A headache is building at the base of her neck. She wonders if that’s one of the symptoms. She wants to ask Mark if he had a headache, but what if he says yes. What then. 

Beck tells Lewis that she should keep her helmet on, and she rolls her eyes. A little late for that. Besides, she’s not going to use up the O2 she has in her suit. Eventually she’s gotta get out of here and get back into the Hab (or, if one of the many other potential worst case scenarios occurs, the MAV). She eyes Mark and he shrugs, like they’re in cahoots or something. “Copy,” is all she says.

Mark runs his hand over his neck, up this jaw, down to his collarbone, traces across to his shoulder, his hand under the collar of his shirt.

“Now what?” he asks, a nervous look to Watney’s face. 

It’s not exactly spacious in the rover and it’s warm already. Beside her, Mark is looking at his hands, rubbing his fingertips together, amazed, as if his own flesh is capable of tricks he never knew.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s awkward small talk, and then there’s whatever is happening in the rover. 

They’ve entered an unspoken tag team agreement: she will keep Watney calm while Watney keeps himself in check. So Lewis lets Mark talk, figures he’s a guy who likes the sound of his own voice, and she's right. He talks. He talks a lot. He starts talking botany at her, something about the pollinated aspects of the spores they found. That that must be what caused this, and if that’s the case, it’s not something you can acquire from a human host. He talks rapidly, faster than usual, the hair at the nape of his neck damp with sweat. She can smell him; it’s not unappealing – there’s that enduringly male scent, heat, the same plain soap they all use. It’s as she half-listens to him that it hits her, how familiar he has become to her. How all of them, for that matter, have. It’s as if they have all become an extension of her, and she’s never really thought of that until now. She doesn’t think it’s something she should ever think, too personal.

Before leaving Earth, she had to attend all these leadership seminars. All this psychobabble about connecting with team members, listening to their concerns, trying to help them through any crisis they encounter mid-space. It was her job to to keep them all at an even keel, as if they were in a small rowboat together and one flailing motion could send them all underwater. It wasn’t anything new to her. She was met with the same sort of expectations in the Navy, when they were at sea. When you’re stuck together you have to rely on each other. That’s a given. 

In addition to the team-building exercises, they had her sit down individually with each of the team members. She had liked Martinez near instantly, the same military code bred into their bones, camaraderie easy, as if it had already been there in the room with them and all they had to do was pluck it up and make it their own. She found a dead-pan slyness to Vogel she had appreciated, serious, but a glint of something else beneath that. Beck she found difficult to read, knew he was better trained than she was when it came to people and psychology, and she had wondered if in his own way he was testing her. She hoped he was; she could respect that. Johanssen had intrigued her: she was quiet, intelligent, eyes quick as they darted around the room and around Lewis’s face. And Watney. The first thing he did was crack a joke and she had laughed out of surprise, like he had dragged it from her against her will. She can’t remember what he said. He’s said thousands of other odd and funny things since then and over that same course of time erased her reluctance.  

She thought she was prepared. 

This, though. This is different. 

Mark’s sweating more, the collar of his shirt dark with it, a patch between his shoulder blades she can see when he bends forward, practically rocking in his seat. His hands are clenched in his lap. 

“Some real bad fucking juju must’ve gone down because, I mean, when you got nature conspiring to get you laid, how do you even explain the failure of a species beyond, like, total environmental cataclysm?” He keeps talking, lightning fast. “Although maybe it didn’t affect their biological systems the way it does with ours. Mine. That’s really, you know, fucking human-centric of me, I never think of the Martians!” He’s yelling now, his face twisted both with forced humor and restraint. He takes a deep breath; it shudders through him and for the first time since the rover’s doors shut, since she cut off communication, she wonders just how much danger she might be in with him. Mark jerks his head towards her. “What if the bacteria, the spore shit, it’s really, like, I don’t know – mind control. What if your sex drive is the easiest thing to hack because it’s so susceptible to outside influence, and – ”

“Speak for yourself,” she says, prim for effect. She expects some goofy remark from him. It never comes. He’s staring at her, as if her self control not only fascinates him, but stimulates, too. Her body tenses. He looks away, jaw clenched, deep in thought. She watches him try to relax as he exhales through his teeth. 

Finally he says, “Of course,” and laughs. “Never you.” 

She frowns; it’s not what she expected him to say. There’s something oddly cutting in his words. She tells herself that he’s uncomfortable, he’s frustrated, he’s not a cruel man. “What?” she tries to tease. “You think because I’m your commander I don’t think about sex?”

She had misjudged. It was self-denial. A groan drags from Mark as he scrubs a hand over his face. “Oh, god, please promise me you never think about sex, that you don’t have a sexual bone in your body – and yeah, gotta say, I really regret that choice of phrasing right now.”

She arches an eyebrow, a small distracted puff of laughter leaving her mouth as it tips up. He’s looking at her again, a dark fondness, and she wants to tell him it’s going to be alright. He’s going to be fine.

“Your husband, really, he’s a very nice man.”

It draws Lewis back down to herself. Her voice is hard as she says, “Excuse me?”

“I just, I feel like I need to say that, atone for my sins, because, holy shit,” he spits out, “I can’t stop thinking about fucking your mouth right now and I am really really sorry about that.”

She twists the wedding ring on her finger and does not say a word. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The small talk only works for so long; after an hour, Mark reaches a point where he has to do something.  

He tries to play it cool, hide it. “It’s really hot in here, right?” he says, and there’s a low, needy rasp to his voice that definitely was never there before. Lewis has been studiously ignoring the details of all this (the bulge in his pants, the way he tries to disguise it as he shifts his hips in an effort to get comfortable), but even she can’t deny his quick rate of decompensation. There’s a slight tremble to him now, as if his body is having a hard time containing the energy coursing through him.  

“You, um, can go ahead.” She ducks her head. “And do. What you need to do,” she says, each word careful.

“With talk like that, how could a man resist?”

She casts a withering glance in his direction. He meets her eye. He’s looking at her like he wants to confirm her order (god, is that what this is? _an order?_ ) and she nods, small. 

She quickly looks away when he opens his pants. He’s got a fat cock, and she’s not sure what she expected or if she expected anything, but she can feel her cheeks coloring. She stares out at the Martian landscape stretched red and forbidding before her. She can hear his hand on himself, the harsh bite of a sigh as his fist starts to move. Her mouth feels dry, she swallows fast. 

She can’t seem to tune him out as he jacks off beside her. His hand moves quickly, his breath as well, punctuated now and again by a quiet grunt. She keeps her own breathing even. She’s fine. This is nothing. 

This has to be nothing, she thinks. She doesn't get the excuse that she’s infected with Martian sex voodoo or whatever Watney keeps calling it. She’s in her right mind. She’s supposed to be better than this. But.  

Well, but. She’s their commander. She’s _his_ commander. It’s her job to take care of her team. It’s her duty to take care of him. There’s sacrifice in duty. This isn’t about her. This isn't about her. She presses her legs together and this isn’t about her. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It becomes pretty damn clear his hand alone isn’t going to be enough. If anything, it seems to frustrate him more.

A snarl of sound breaks from Mark. “I can’t,” he starts, “I need,” and then he stops himself. “Jesus, Mars is so fucked up.” He tries to laugh, fails. 

Lewis can feel his eyes on her.

“I can’t take advantage of a subordinate,” she says, more to herself than to him. He hasn’t said anything. He hasn’t asked her for anything, but she is purposefully not looking at him, stuck in her own private indecision.

She is the most in her element when she is trapped in a tight spot. 

Truth be told, Lewis always kind of liked the closed-in feel of the Hab and of the Hermes. She liked feeling as if she was sealed off in a small, tight place, safe from every danger raging just outside the door. It wasn’t the safety that appealed to her but the closeness to that threat. The safest she ever felt was eight-hundred feet below the sea. Space travel had come as second nature. 

A big threat lies wide open here. She's too close to it. What happens if she touches him? What comes next?

Mark snorts. “Take advantage? Jesus, look, your subordinate? Is currently blitzed out of his goddamn mind on the Martian equivalent of molly and Cialis. I’m not read up on SOP for a literal clusterfuck of this magnitude, but I’m guessing it’s going to be pretty forgiving in a don’t ask, don’t tell kind of way.”

A long pause stretches, interrupted only by the slow, wet rhythm of his hand, both of them ignoring the surreality of having a conversation while he jacks off (god, she thinks, this mission is going to go down in infamy). “We’ll have to tell Beck,” she hears herself say, her voice cool and confident, unaffected. “There is minimal to no impact on verbal skills.” 

A quick bark of laughter from Mark that colors into something filthier. She can hear, even if she can’t see, the shift in his pace, how he’s somehow both frantic and lazy about this. She’s not looking at him. She can hear the rasp of his hand over himself, the involuntary frustrated sounds that leave his mouth, the labored breathing. 

Finally, he says, “That your only misgiving about this? Procedure?” He’s teasing her, but there’s this desperate, near pleading edge to him that makes her cast a quick glance at him askance. She wishes she hadn’t. The look on his face is full of open want, maybe even a little fear, and her eyes drift down of their own accord. His hand is wet with his own pre-come, head of his cock red and leaking. She averts her eyes.  

He makes that sound again, the one that’s half-laugh and half-gasp.  

“You’re flushed,” he says, more smug than he has any right to be. She holds a hand up to her cheek, the skin warm to the touch.

“It’s hot in here,” she says, clipped tone. 

“Okay, yeah, sure.” He’s panting now. He’s not going to ask her. He’s not going to say the one thing that would make this all okay: I need you to. You’d be doing me a favor. Please. Something twists deep in her gut, feels a lot like arousal colored with something worse, as she realizes it – she wants him to beg. 

It’s her job to help him. She wants to help him. She _wants_ –

It’s as if Lewis processes her own desire as something external from herself, something she should not possess. It’s as if there is something under her own skin that is equal parts foreign and known to her. It’s what she imagines it’s like when an artificial hip is put in or a prosthetic limb – the body has to learn it as its own. Her body is processing something as its own. Something that should not be there.

She makes herself look at him now, unblinking, watches the bob of his throat as he swallows hard, eyes gone dark, fixed on her. It’s been over a year since anyone touched her, since she touched anyone. Over a year since anyone has looked at her like that. They’re all in the same boat in that regard (though she has her doubts where Beck and Johanssen are concerned, but that’s a problem for another less sexually fraught day, when she feels a little less _pot and the kettle black_.)

She makes a decision. She yields (and she is not yielding to him but rather to herself, a distinction that matters, will matter, later, when they have left this planet behind, when they have left him behind, and where Mark Watney is concerned she is a mess of failure, guilt and contrition). There is nothing elegant in how she moves to him, the carriage of her body careful and severe (everything about her, he would say, is careful and severe), like she is afraid she might betray anything inside of her she has not given express permission to exist.

She straddles his legs, her knees on either side of his, her hands on her hips. Mark’s eyes go big, brows shoot up into his hairline. 

“Are you trying to seduce me?” he jokes nervously, and that’s cute. Even when he’s strung-out and keyed up and, clearly, desperate to come, he has a sense of humor. There’s something for the mission report performance review.  

“I’m trying to help,” she hears herself say and she likes the look on his face. It’s gratitude and awe, open and untempered by anything else he might be feeling. She settles her body against his, his thighs warm under hers, each breath from him more akin to a gasp. She wraps her hand around his hand; her fingers drift over his, against his cock.

“Holymotherfucking _shit_ ,” he gasps, his hand falling away.

Lewis’s mouth crooks into a quick smile. “I’m flattered.” 

“Don’t be,” he says, gritting his teeth. She loosely grips him, slick in her hand, and it’s stupid how hot this is. “I think,” he manages to get out, “I’d joyously accept a handy from Teddy fucking Sanders himself – or, or, or, one of those robot rover guys, you know, with the metal claws for hands?” 

She twists her wrist and his mouth drops open, silent, and that’s better. “I’m doing you a favor,” and she’s proud of how even and smooth her voice sounds. How much the justification rings as true and inarguable in her head.

Mark’s hands are moving, twitching, like he wants to touch her but can’t let himself. Like he’s clinging fast to that small bit of control left in his power and that’s costing him. His restraint is impressive. Though maybe that’s why he won’t touch her – the second he does, that restraint will crumble immediately. He won’t be able to get that back. He thinks, she thinks, that he can hurt her.

With her free hand, she takes him by the wrist and places his hand on her waist. Five points of pressure as his fingers dig in through her shirt. He comes over her hand, his head tipped back, hand spanning her ribs, thumb edging up against the underside of her breast. He’s still hard, and that’s interesting. 

“We bring this shit back and we’re gonna make a billion Big Dick Pharma dollars,” he says, out of breath. A broken laugh erupts from him, and then – “Fuck. I still need,” and he stops. Lewis wonders if it’s more out of embarrassment or selflessness or maybe a combination of the two: that he hates asking her for anything, that he hates asking her for this, that there isn’t a word invented yet to summarize everything he wants and hates and hates to want, wants to hate. 

He doesn’t have to ask. She wants to help him. She wants to help. She wants him. She wants she wants she wants she wants _she wants –_  


It’s difficult to get her pants down, the space cramped, awkward as she struggles, her knee cracking into his. 

“What are you doing?” he asks.

She stops, her pants shoved halfway down her thighs. She looks at him through the hair that has fallen in her face. “What does it look I’m doing.”

“You don’t, you don’t have to do this,” he says, the words stuttering out of him, nothing very convincing in his voice. 

“I know,” and then she says, the truth, “I want to.”

The words are like a command, permission, like all he needed to hear. Mark rears up under her then, his hands joining hers on her hips, blunt nails scratching at the exposed skin, and okay, so she’s doing this, they’re doing this. Her pulse is loud in her ears.

She’s bare to him below the waist and the shellshocked, pupils-blown way he looks at her – she doesn’t think about it, she drags a hand through his hair and he moans, his head rolling into her, his mouth below her belly button and her fingers curl against his scalp, against the heat of him. He moves a hand between her legs – _a fact-finding mission_ , she thinks idiotically, but he’s got his fingers passing over her clit, testing her, and they come away wet. He moans her name (her last name, she likes that) and she whispers, _no_. He has to know: this isn’t about her.

He has to know, but his hands drag over her skin, and about that, she was right: now that he’s touching her, it’s like he can’t stop. He gets her shirt off and the sports bra she has on winds up twisted, her breasts exposed, elastic biting red lines into her flesh. His fingers pass over the dusting of freckles along her shoulders, like he was learning her. Like there were so many parts of her he hadn’t even known to imagine. 

She straddles his hips again – and here it is, what she had wanted and had wanted to never admit to wanting: he’s begging for it now, he’s begging for her, he says, “ _please_ ,” he says, “ _fuck me_ ” – and without ceremony, she slides onto him, wetter than she thought she’d be (than she has any right to be). He all but shouts the word _fuck_ and she breathes out slowly. She kind of gets it in that moment, finds it hard to breathe herself, the stretch of him inside of her uncomfortable but good. She gasps, “ _oh_ ,” when he’s finally in her, like she’s shocked. And maybe she is, a little. Because he feels good inside of her, good in a way she doesn’t want to interrogate further than simply feeling him.  

She rides him quick and hard and Mark bucks up under her. Mark won’t stop talking; he would be the type to run his mouth, even and especially when getting laid. He says the worst sort of shit that she knows she’s going to have a hard time forgetting ( _how good she feels, how wet, how he’s going to fill her up, how he’s going to_ – ). She leans back, tells herself she is creating distance, but the angle of him inside of her is even better like that, and she hears a high keening noise, realizes it’s her. Mark says, _yes_ , forceful and feral, his hips snapping. She tips further back, fears she’ll hit the rover control panel (that’s all they need) so she leans forward, over him, strands of her hair sticking to his wet parted mouth, her arms wrapped tight ( _too tight_ ) around him. Mark grabs her ass, his mouth wet at her neck; she can feel lips, tongue, teeth, and her hips buck. 

Her hand cradles the back of her head. “I wanted you,” she hears him say, once and then again, hoarse and terrible for its earnest. She closes her eyes. That’s not what this is about. It can’t be what this is about. She tells him to shut up, warmth clouding her voice, her judgment.

He comes then – she can feel him, hot and wet, jerking under her – but he keeps fucking her, slow rolls of his hips, his cock still hard and buried deep in her. A hand between her legs, his fingers clumsy, the ridge of his knuckles there to grind against, even as she manages to say, “You don’t have to.” She comes like that, like flicking a pulled bow string – the vibrations carry through her, the shudder, but the tension remains. Mark is noisier than her, groaning thick encouragement, and it’s not supposed to be like this, she thinks, it was supposed to be a favor, but here she is, clinging to him, all but sobbing when his open mouth finds her breast.

Her head feels thick, unfocused, her cunt oversensitive and he’s fucking her harder now, each drag of him in and out of her too much, too much, and is this what it’s been for him? She is removed from herself, realizes she is saying, “I’m sorry,” aloud. That she keeps apologizing to him, this note of hysterical hilarity curdling her voice, until the words get muddied, thick in her mouth ( _– thick in her mouth, she wants him thick in her mouth, wants to taste him, swallow him down, spill out of her, make him choke her, and_ – ) and he’s muttering something in return but she can’t focus on what he’s saying. She is afraid of what he is saying. It doesn’t matter what he’s saying, not as long as he stays inside of her, splitting her open. She wants his fingers in her, his mouth, remembers the first time she saw him and the only thing about him that surprised her was how much she liked him. She can’t think straight, like all those cautionary talks about the bends, she’s gone around the bend, she’s out of her depth. 

She can’t remember what sex is supposed to feel like, but it can’t be this, it’s impossible, all gripping unending sensation that crests and crests without ever breaking. Everything centered between her legs, each part of her body touching his. 

Mark’s hips lose their pace, fucking fast and shallow as he spills into her again. He’s still hard; he moans a curse, like he’s asking her of all people for mercy. He palms the back of her head, pulls her to him, hand slipping down to her jaw, over her mouth, so she bites and sucks at his fingers, wants to hear him moan again. Wants him to return her to herself.

He gets her down on the floor of the rover, her body spread under him, hardly any room in the rover for it. The inside of the rover is too warm, too small, the smallest place she has hidden herself, her body making his her own. She’s dimly aware of her elbow striking the metal base of the seat but the pain registers as faraway. What registers is: his hands, tracing the bone of her hips; his mouth, begging her again; his face, stormy and unfamiliar yet somehow entirely recognizable and known. 

He’s slow pushing into her, her cunt resisting. Wet and stretched already but she keeps clenching, spasming around him as he tries to fuck in deeper. She feels so full, so wet – with his cock, his come, she feels filthy, can feel it dripping out of her, hear it as he fucks her. “Oh my god, oh my god,” he says, mouths at the underside of her jaw, and thinks she might have said that aloud, _I can feel you dripping out of me_. 

Mark’s hand is caught in her hair and it hurts, her neck arches. He kisses her – there’s no need for this, she thinks – and she kisses him back. She can taste salt on his tongue, sweat, him, kisses him deeper, answering him in kind. He has her spiraling up again, wound tight, like a garrote, like in the movies, the line of wire pulled so taut and so tight around a bared throat, tighter, tighter, until it breaks the skin, until it breaks,  _until_ –

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sol 14 Mark wakes and is definitely pretty sure he is probably dead.

Or at least he kinda wishes he was. 

He holds his head as he sits up, wincing. Fuck, it’s like the morning after a night of pounding Jäegermeister before moving on to – based solely on what he imagines the aftermath would feel like – ketamine. All that, times, like, ten. That’s a scientific fucking statistic right there, he’s decided. 

He feels sore, his body pained and resisting him as he moves to sit up, and if he’s feeling like this, then he can’t even imagine what she – _fuck_. Oh, fuck, man. All aboard the guilty, embarrassing, circuitous train of thought that’s taking him through a scenic view of Mark Watney Fucking His Commander.

He cringes as he stumbles out of his bunk and he  realizes two things: 1. no one else is here, and 2. he slept late. 

He finds Lewis alone in the small kitchen of the Hab.

“Thought we’d let you rest,” she says. And she’s got that faux-Mona Lisa face happening, one of those closed-mouth smiles that’s not really a smile but something else altogether. 

“Most appreciated,” he says. 

And he doesn’t meant to do it, but here he is, making some space coffee and space eggs, and even with her seated at the table behind him, he can’t stop picturing her. Can’t stop picturing all the tiny details he really has no right to know. All that pale skin, almost translucent, the blue veins in her breasts, their heavy weight in his hand, delicate collarbone under his mouth, sex turning him into the worst kind of mediocre poet.

He takes a seat at the table across from her, shovels in a forkful of eggs. Needs salt. He watches her watch him, and the only thing Mark has ever known to employ in a tense moment is a glib comment. 

“You know how many people have fucked on Mars?" he says and her coffee mug hides her mouth. "Thats some prime bucket list material right there. Talk about ‘to boldly go.’”

He’s always found it impressive how Lewis can turn it on and off: there’s no unkindness in her face but it’s closed and cool, he can’t penetrate it, and, Jesus, man, there’s a word to use, huh. Fun fact (though not for the kids so don’t include this in future space camp seminars): when he is abandoned on Mars (which, by the way, will happen in four sols time, and will totally trump getting horned up by a bunch of microscopic Martian bacterial organisms as the most unprecedented and unprepared for shit that happens on this mission), so much as a thought of her’s got him popping wood. For a long time, he will think it’s gotta be some biological contaminant shit. Leftovers in his bloodstream. He will be wrong and he will know it. 

“Yes. The career highlight I have spent all these years striving to achieve.”

He can’t help it – he smirks. “Proud to be a participant, I gotta say.”

“Oh, I have no doubt.” She stands up, taking her coffee with her.  

“Uh, Commander?” he says. He’s thrown by the near abashed look on her face when she turns around, like he caught her actually trying to sneak out of his bed without waking him.

“I don’t think this is a conversation I want you referring to me as Commander,” she says, each word measured, that rehearsed voice on the radio thing she’s got, where she always sounds right over the comms, always has. That had been his first real thought about her when they had met. He met her over the comms before he saw her face. It had been a practice drill at Canaveral and they hadn’t been introduced yet. Over the comms came her voice, and he had liked that voice, crisp and capable, though like one of those old-time film stars. It was a voice that oozed not only authority but, he had thought, inspired devotion. Loyalty was the thing to have for a leader, that’s a given. But devotion? Fuck, that’s a whole other ball game.  

“Fine,” he says, nods. “Lewis?” He can’t call her Melissa, that’d be a full-blown goddamn mutiny. That’d warp the word devotion that much worse in his head. 

“Mark?”

“We’re good, right?”

She’s the sharpest woman he has ever met. The harsh, angular planes of her face go soft and he thinks she almost looks guilty, like she failed him by giving him what he wanted.

“Yeah. Of course.”

The smile that tries her mouth changes the landscape of her face; without meaning to, he commits her to memory. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On any given day (or sol) the things Mark Watney thinks about (in no particular order) are: 

1\. The Cubs; 

2\. Sex, his dick, the usual;

3\. Zombies on Mars;

4\. His fucking job and fucking science, man;

5\. A miserable death met in the cold uncaring vacuum of space;

6\. Her.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
